The purpose is to develop polymers and devices to treat and prevent eye problems, and to investigate materials used as contact lenses, vitreous substitutes, scleral buckling materials for retinal detachment surgery, and sustained delivery of antibiotics and anticancer agents to the eye. We plan to develop a nonabsorbable, jelly-like, coherent vitreous implant, to be injected unfragmented inside the vitreous cavity, and to investigate the biologically inert, swelling, and nonabsorbable scleral buckling materials softer then silicones to be used with attenuated sclera or sclera weakened by previous surgery. New contact lenses are being used with increasing frequency for therapeutic purposes as well as for optical correction. The flux of oxygen across these lenses will be investigated and correlated to the corneal's needs. One major problem encountered with the use of hydrogel and silicone lenses is the formation of coatings that sometimes may cause a conjunctival reaction. The adsorption and the absorption of the protein components of tears on and into contact lens materials will be investigated and correlated uith the conjunctival reaction to the lenses. Lastly, chemotherapy for intraocular malignancies has been found to have value as a supplement to other treatments. However, it was also found that once a therapeutic concentration of these drugs was reached in the ocular tissues, considerable hematopoietic depression developed, among other complications. These problems could be overcome by sustained release of the drug directly to the tumor site through implanted devices. Development of a mechanism for sustained release of drugs would benefit patients whose physical conditions would not tolerate radiation or systemic administration of large doses of drugs. The ultimate objective of this project is the treatment of malignant melanoma and retinoblastoma by means of drugs (DTIC and BCNU) continuously released from ocular implants.